Dear Academic Approach Families & Colleagues:

After reviewing school re-opening plans, many of you submitted thoughtful requests and posed important questions about ways to support your students’ academic enrichment and skills-based test preparation with subject-specific academic supplements. If you have requests or questions, please fill out this brief survey, and we’ll respond.

ACT Registration Open
ACT launched their new registration system today, so students may have to migrate their account if they have created one in the past. Registration is available for any date through July of 2021. Some sites for September and October dates are already full, so we encourage you to sign up as soon as possible to ensure your date of choice.

Academic Warm-ups: Reading
With schools re-opening soon—whatever the model—it’s time for students to kick off the rust, warm up their academic skills, and prepare for the rigors of next year’s coursework. We’ll focus this week on some subject specific warm-ups. Today’s topic: Reading.

Studies into reading have often found that students do not spend enough time actually reading texts–even in school. Students spend as little as 15 minutes per school day actually reading texts in the intermediate grades. Time spent reading both increases students’ comprehension skills and allows for the acquisition of new knowledge from the texts themselves. The new knowledge then provides students with a broader understanding of concepts that allows them to access more and more challenging texts.

Recommended Reading Essentials
Ultimately, the best way to grow as a reader is to read more challenging texts. We’ve put together this recommended reading list–separated by genre and level. Though not comprehensive, this list can help students get started in selecting rigorous, challenging texts to engage with at home.

Reading Skill Builder
We offer targeted programming to support students with their summer reading as they hone their skills in preparation for fall coursework. We wrap a high-impact skill building supplement around a student’s upcoming reading to develop annotation and summarizing skills, essay composition strategies, and grammar skills for proofreading. As always, our curriculum and instruction are tied to the skills most predictive of college success in English and reading. Let us know if you’d like to set something up for your student.

Be well,
Matthew Pietrafetta, Ph.D., Founder & CEO